One last post, since this is drifting waaaay off topic. (I just can't
not reply.)
One reason for shopping direct is the discount you get on your subscription. Think of the convenience of just having the new book show up at your door without having to worry about going in to order it manually.
Subscriptions are great for the collectors, but they're not very useful for new players. Because it gets you a bunch of books you don't really want, because it's full of content you can't use (with classes and monsters you don't own for example). You want the starter books first building to the newer books. The subscription delays getting the essential books.
(Plus it's on the AP, which doesn't help players.)
Plus, the discount from the subscription is not great. It's often less than the discount from Amazon AND you still need to pay for shipping. Which is generally slow. More than once I have waited two or three weeks for product to even leave the Paizo warehouse.
And, the catch is, new players sustain the company more than existing players, since the money in RPG comes from selling copies of older books.
The first print run of new books is all about paying off the costs of writing the book. But when they continue to sell, that keeps you afloat. Sales of the
Core Rulebook helps sustain the company because the development of that has long since paid for so each sale is profit.
Anecdotally one collector is worth multiple casual gamers. At my table I am not sure if anyone else has any books with all the mooching they do from my copy.
Most game tables have one or two person who buys the book (the serious gamer) and the 2-4 casual gamers who do not.
For a time. Although, we don't know how much new players PF got since then. They might recovered from that loss and even surpassed the former numbers by now. Or not. We don't know, but I won't bury them before they're dead.
I'm not saying Paizo is dead. I do think Pathfinder is currently dying. Slowly.
There is a reason they decided to split their fanbase with Starfinder
I might be wrong, but I think it's also like the market share percentage, because rank is in relation to other things, not the actual sold copies.
The chart is for overall book sales, not just in a particular subgenre (like Fantasy or Gaming).
In that instance, Pathfinder went from being #1 (above 4e) to the 30s and 40s. In large part because 5e was doing so well.
Camelcamelcamle.com is pretty much sales compared to other sales. Total book rank. A book can drop if other books are doing better, such as during September when school starts and there's a way of University book purchases increasing overall book sales.
But for a book to drop and stay dropped, it would have to mean the entire book industry is suddenly booming.
But even if they're selling less copies, I'm not surprised. The business model is vastly different that 5e's.
Yeah… they're business model is the same as 2e and 3e: lots and lots of new products and the occasional side product line.
But we don't know if the product still sales well, or at least well enough to sustain them. What we know is that McDonalds sells more.
I don't want Paizo to take over the world, or beat WotC. I'm not in need to make myself feel better by playing the most popular game, I'm perfectly content with the company I like the products of making those products and being okay financially. I'm okay being more niche.
And Paizo is still by far the second biggest in the hobby, so I'm not afraid.
Paizo is the biggest company in terms of staffing though… Which is the issue. And while a couple people have left, the RPG team for Pathfinder is still much, much bigger than D&D's team.
Their sales seem to be slipping but they seem to be holding the course and releasing books like they're still the best selling RPG and a still new and growing RPG.
They have to respond in some way, and I'm not sure increasing their production costs via Starfinder is the way.
But that's you and you're likely more in the 5e target audience, so it's fine.
As someone who has been gaming since 2e, yeah I am the target audience.
I disagree. New gamers aren't just the only target audience of 5e, there are others. Old gamers being nostalgic with a game that resembles more the earlier editions' feel. People, who don't like crunch, or have issues with "bloat". People who prefer lighter rulesets, or who prefer to homebrew, people with less time, etc.
Kinda. New people were a nice bonus, but I don't think 5e actively went after them. (4e did and look what happened there.)
It was really a deliberate efforts to go back to the roots. And that did mean simpler, as OD&D and Basic were pretty simple and very well loved.
Hence the playtest. They did a massive playtest and heavily tooled the game based on the feedback of existing fans, trying to meet their needs. It was very much a game built on a foundation of pleasing the current fanbase and the lapsed fans.
However, I'm standing by my assesment, that 5e's main audience is new gamers. The whole business plan is catered toward them, the game is catered toward them, to make picking up the game as easy as possible and I'm fairly sure they are making up the biggest demographic of 5e players right now.
You're right that it's biggest audience, it's main audience, is new gamers. But not because the game was catered towards them, but simply because it's more accessible to them.
There are lots of factors. The simple rules do make it easier to jump in and feel less intimidated. And there's less pressure to know all the rules or do what the rules want you to do rather than what you want to do. Plus the more limited release schedule reduces the Wall of Books phenomena that can be intimidating and making choosing a book harder. And, the big one, the simpler game makes it much easier to stream, which both acts as how-to-play demo and advertisement.
5e isn't "catering" to new players anymore than Pathfinder was. Both want new people coming into gaming. That's why they released the
Beginner Box.
Also, change the word "dedicated" to "long term fans, who'd like to see more content" (mechanical or setting/fluff)" and I think we're okay.
And yeah, "dedicated" to me means, that you're interested in this thing enough, that you spend significant time with it, want to read more of it, try more things out, etc. That you want more stuff, plain and simple. WotC just doesn't have enought stuff for 5e to satisfy those, especially if you want official material. So, I think those people will, after a time, converge toward other games.
Right. The catch is, those content oriented fans will always be the minority of most gaming groups. Few GMs are lucky* enough to have an entire table of players will all the books who spend their free time building characters and planning their build. Most are going to be casual friends who want to hang with some mates and play a game. Or like the rules but rely on a friend's book or have to be pushed to level their characters.
*I say "lucky" but having played in more than one PFS table full of optimizers, that's probably closer to a living hell. Balance just gets thrown out the window at that point.
Again, I'm not saying 5e doesn't have "dedicated" fans, in the sense of dedicated meaning "long-term" for another reasons, but I do think that it is a minority, while new and casual gamers are the majority. And no, I don't thin "casual" is a demeaning word, but it's a different level of interest. I also don't think that being aimed primarily at new gamers is a bad thing. It's just thing.
First, your post again assumes that new players are somehow not "dedicated" or focused on the mechanics with a desire for content. I've seen lots of new players become obsessed with the game, rapidly buying everything they could get their hands on.
(For some reason, I also get the impression you're equating "new players" with "young players" making you sound a little dismissive. "Oh those kids today. With their Twitch and their 5e.")
Pathfinder does cater to the "builders" in a way that 5e does not. Which is a feature/bug. It is the big complaint of 5e at my table for the two people who do like thinking of builds and doing the lonely fun of character building.
But, of course, that's affecting the "fun" away from the table. And I think the focus of the game should be fun AT the table.
Plus, the more the game is designed to the "builders" the harder it is for casual fans and players. Who are always going to be the quiet majority of players, if not purchasers.
But the thing to remember is that while a purchaser may be "dedicated" or "casual" or a fan of a particular system, most gaming groups are going to be a mixture. Most gaming groups are going to be comprised of both "dedicated" players and "casual" players, with the majority not being tied to a single game system.
Many GMs are going to opt to not overwhelming the casuals, satisfying them with a simpler system rather than satisfy the crunch enthusiasts. Or, in my case, go with 5e because it's easier for me to manage as a DM since I need to track far fewer player abilities, and I control the rules rather than the rules controlling me, and balancing encounters is generally much easier.
In short, your whole thought process is rather alien to me. I'm not measuring content by how much of it I actually used. Given, that's only a small portion of it. But that's not a problem, because having cool stuff to choose from (mechanically) and stuff to read and being inspired by (fluff) is a merit on itself in my eyes. Having options is a merit on itself. If I'd play only 1 class from those in ACG, that's fine.
I am a collector, but collections are finite. There's a slippery slope from "collector" to "hoarder". I decided I already had more than enough content, and additional content was in no way improving my game. And, in fact, after the ACG the additional content was actually being detrimental to my game.
I have lots of books I bought just to decorate my shelves. There's no shortage of really pretty gaming books. I didn't need more Pathfinder. Especially when it was coming out faster than I could read...
But hey, I'm the kind of people, who like options and detailed settings and yes, even metaplot, so there's that. I never got into the mindset of not liking, for example FR, or WoD, because thre are too many stuff for it. Well, duh, that's the point.
I won't say I'm a collector, I'm not buying books just to sit on the shelves, unread. I buy what interests me, but if something interests me, I'd at least read it, even if I won't using much of it and that's okay. RPG books aren't just tools for me, but sources of inspiration and leisurely reading too.
RPG books are sources of inspiration for me. But, something that is 75% crunch is far less inspiring than a campaign setting book or book of lore. (Like Book of the Damned which devotes a full quarter of its pages to PC/NPC crunch… plus monsters.)
As I said, I moved to filling in some of the gaps in my 2e and 3e collection. Getting those old gems I skipped. And finding new games to read through, like Star Trek Adventures and Genysis and Shadows of Esteren. Looking at how another game system plays with the narrative gives me much more inspiration.
I'm fairly sure everything, or elmost gotten used by someone somewhere, along the years. That's enough. Nobody will count it. They won't get more money if more people will try more of the options. It's not like Youtube, where you'll get money by more hours watched. If someone bought a book, enjoyed reading it and at the end only used one new class, or one location from it in their entire gaming career, but considered it a good read, that's enough.
It also means you'll get to have more niche options and that is appreciated.
The content in the Core Rulebook and Advanced Player's Guide. Sure. The content in Ultimate Intrigue or Wilderness Adventures, where each new feat is competing with the best hundred feats from the rest of the game... I'm less sure. Each subsequent book is going to be less used. And more content that exists for those collectors and not to actually see play.
And what's the point of creating a game that no one plays?
